Washington File - February 10, 2000
Phillip Kurata, Washington File Staff Writer

"We must treat this plague as we would an invading army. This must be all-out, unconditional war," said U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman. She said the shame and silence surrounding AIDS must be dispelled to fight the disease.

"Let us be candid. This is a sexually transmitted disease," she said. "Too often, these facts have hindered the total effort we must have. But the fact is: AIDS is an equal opportunity killer. We can not be embarrassed. We can not be silent. Because embarrassment means delay and silence means death."

Herman made her comments at the U.S./Africa Trade Union Summit on HIV/AIDS Workplace Education that took place in Washington in early February. The conference drew union leaders from 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa together with labor leaders, government officials and lawmakers from the United States.

Last year, Vice President Al Gore announced a $100 million initiative to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. Herman said the money will be spent on prevention and education programs, home and community-based care and help for children orphaned by AIDS. For the coming fiscal year, the administration has requested another $10 million to fund health education and HIV prevention programs by the International Labor Organization, Herman said.

HIV stands for human immunodefiency virus, which causes the incurable disease, AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The disease has killed 10 times the number of people who have died in all the wars in Africa combined, said Sandra Thurman, the White House director of National AIDS Policy. The disease kills 5,500 people and infects 11,000 in Africa daily, Thurman said. By 2010, AIDS will have orphaned 40 million African children, she added.

John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor organization, promised solidarity to help Africa overcome the disease that is ravaging the continent. Twenty-five million people in Africa are infected with AIDS, two-thirds of the world's AIDS victims, African trade union leaders say.

"Brothers and sisters, I say to you that just as we are interconnected in the struggle to make the new global economy work for working people, we are inextricably bound together in the struggle to eradicate HIV/AIDS," Sweeney said.

Sweeney decried the reluctance of wealthy nations to write off the debts of developing countries, which he said are unable to provide basic health care and education because they are broke.

Sweeney attacked the large pharmaceutical companies for "denying drugs needed to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic by hiding behind the fig leaf of intellectual property rights."

Andrew Kailembo, a leader in the South African labor movement, welcomed Sweeney's offer to pressure the pharmaceutical companies for AIDS medications.

Impoverished Africans, who live on less than $1 a day, have no way to buy AIDS medication, which costs $20,000 a year, Kailembo said.

"We need the support in this fight of the AFL-CIO. We need the support of the U.S. government, so we can get medicine, which can help many people survive longer," Kailembo said.

Emma Chitsa, a union leader from Zimbabwe, said in the absence of drugs, workers go home to their villages to die after they contract AIDS. "They spread AIDS to their caregivers because their caregivers don't know how to feed them and protect themselves," Chitsa said.

U.S. Representative Don Payne, a New Jersey Democrat, told the conference that AIDS has lowered the average life span in Botswana from 61 to 49. He said the U.S. drug company, Bristol Meyers, has committed $100 million to fighting AIDS in Africa. Payne said he hopes Bristol Meyers will contribute another $150 million in fiscal year 2001. Bristol Meyers' leadership on this issue hopefully will encourage other pharmaceutical companies to contribute, Payne said.

The African trade unions are taking a leading role in the AIDS issue because the economic conditions of African workers often contribute to the spread of AIDS and because the unions have the power to force workers to take AIDS prevention education.

"The shop stewards can say, 'If you don't use the condom, you die,'" Kailembo said. "There are cases in the agricultural world where a man uses one condom three times in washing. Now that is because of ignorance. It is not the NGO (non-government organization), which is going to do the job. It is the shop steward who is going to go to this man and say, 'Please, don't do this. This is how the condom should be used.'"

The migratory nature of Africa's labor economy lends itself to the spread of AIDS, said Phill Wilson, executive director of the African American AIDS Policy and Training Institute.

"Men often work in plantations or mines 10 or 11 months a year, leaving their wives and children in their villages. That creates a situation where men take temporary wives and single mothers take temporary husbands," Wilson said.

Superstition and ignorance also contribute to the spread of the disease. U.S. Representative Richard Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, said he learned during an AIDS fact-finding tour of Africa that men believe they can prevent or cure AIDS by having sex with virgins. The result is that young girls are infected.

"AIDS in Africa, AIDS in India, AIDS in America, AIDS wherever is the moral question and challenge of our time," Gephardt said.

"If a Hitler of today was marching into all these countries and killing the number of people that are being killed by AIDS, you can bet that the United States Defense Department, the United States Congress, the United Nations and the government of every country in this world would be massing a defense effort the likes of which you've never seen," he said.

Jerry Sirk, an AFL-CIO community service liaison worker in Michigan, came to the conference to tell African union leaders about a program that has worked to reduce AIDS in southwest Michigan and might work in Africa. The program known as HYPE -- HIV Youth Peer Education -- recruits amateur teenage actors to stage plays about AIDS prevention in schools. "After the play, all the adults leave the room, and kids ask kids about AIDS," Sirk said. "We think HYPE could be applied to schools in Cape Town."

Sirk said World AIDS Day, which falls on December 1, should be accompanied by a week of AIDS education for workers. "We want to convince businessmen that it's in their interest to make AIDS education mandatory," Sirk said. Many South African companies hire two workers for every position to fill because they expect one of the recruits to die of AIDS, said U.S. National AIDS Policy Director Thurman.

A Hollywood-based charity, Artists for a New South Africa, and the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) have joined the AIDS education campaign. U.S. actors such as Ted Danson, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover will help prepare public service messages on the danger of AIDS, which the SABC will air.
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